FCNL Washington Newsletter 1999: Iss 62

5 Pages·1999·0.26 MB·English

RFC
1-62, Summer 1999
liNL
IHDIAM E
FRIENDS COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL LEGISLATION, 245 Second St. NE. Washington, DC 2{KX)2
(2()2)547-6(KK) • Fax [phone] • Legislative Action Message [phone]
Web page: http://www.fcnl.org • e-mail: [email protected]
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THE 1999 GATHERING OE FRIENDS
ON NATIVE AMERICAN AFFAIRS
Wc call upon Quakers to reaffirm the historic ■ continued resistance to the recognition of
commitment of the Society of Friends to seek jus¬ Indian religious freedoms;
tice with Native Americans. We are clear that our
■ an alarming increase in Indian youth violence,
first responsibility is to educate ourselves and to
suicide, and substance abuse;
seek the leading of the Spirit for right action...We
believe that at this moment, Friends have a heal¬ ■ persistent, extensive poverty in most Indian
ing role to play in promoting communication, communities, despite a growing national
working to educate non-Native communities, and economy;
advocating in support of Native peoples based on ■ non-Indians’ pervasive ignorance of Indian
our Testimonies. We call upon Friends every ¬ rights, history, and cultures.
where to Join us in this endeavor.
—Plenary Statement from the 1999 Gathering of At the same time, factors such as the following
Friends on Indian Affairs, May 2, 1999 offer unique opportunities:
In answer to a call issued by a broad spectmm of ■ growing visibility and strength of inter-tribal
Friends’ groups. Friends from diverse traditions and public interest Indian organizations—
gathered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, from April 29 spiritual, political, and legal;
through May 2 for the 1999 Gathering of Friends
■ development of viable and complex tribal
on Native American Affairs. In dialogue with
economies in some areas;
concerned Native Americans, Friends sought to
consider a range of issues facing tribes today and ■ increasing numbers of professionally trained
to begin to assess the ways in which Friends Indians who work in support of their people;
might best respond in a more unified manner.
■ emerging international indigenous awareness;
The diverse array of speakers and resource people
■ a generally positive climate of opinion toward
gathered in Tulsa described a unique moment of
the historic claims of Native peoples, reflected
both crisis and opportunity that lies before tribes
in the popular culture and the mass media.
in the U.S. today. Many of these individuals also
Friends gathered in Tulsa issued a call to Quakers
spoke of critical roles that Friends can play in
everywhere to be midwives aiding in the birth of a
influencing this moment.
new era in Indian policy. Plans were made for
In issuing the call for this gathering, concerned
ongoing Friends’ working groups on specific con¬
Friends noted the following indicators of the critical
cerns in the area of Indian policy. Many of those
moment Native Americans face in the U.S. today:
gathered expressed a desire for future regional
■ wide-ranging and organized political and leg¬ gatherings to focus Friends’ efforts. For Friends
islative attacks by non-Indians against Indian who choose to answer this call, an array of oppor¬
sovereignty, jurisdiction, and long-standing tunities exists. This Indian Report offers some
treaty rights; places to begin. ■
Page 2 FCNL Indian Report. Summer 1999
VOICES FROM THE 1999 FRIENDS GATHERING ON NATIVE
The following quotations represent just a few of the many potent images and thoughts shared by speakers at
the Friends Gathering on Native American Affairs. We ojfer brief action suggestions with each of these.
For more information on these and other legislative concerns facing tribes today, we recommend
any of the FCNL resources listed on page 3.
One of my earliest memories is of awakening slowly and easily on an early summer morning, moment by
moment becoming aware of the sights and sounds around me. As I recall, / had begged my parents to let me
sleep outside on the soft sand near the canvas tent in which they still slept. Though it was perhaps seven
o’clock in the morning, the sun was high in the eastern sky, lighting the low-lying hills inland like a warm,
champagne-colored blessing. I awoke lying on my stomach with the sand warm beneath my cheek. Behind me
I could hear the Bering Sea’s constant shushing, shushing, shushing. / turned to watch as a seagull flew
across my field of vision, only a few yards above me. It turned its head this way and that, hut seeming to
respect the morning silence, made no .sound of its own. As I .sat up, I felt the faintest of ocean breezes caress¬
ing my face, .soft and .salty from the south and west.
It is to this experience that my mind turns whenever I hear the word '‘subsistence.” The fact is that, idyllic as it
sounds, the place in which I awakened that long ago day was a place to which my parents would return again
and again, not for recreation, but for food. All around that camp were sources of nourishment — migratory
birds, sweet greens, ripening berries, even roots that they, their parents, and their parents’ parents had learned
to gather over .several millennia.
...In 1959, Alaska became America’s 49th state. I remember an older girl excitedly exclaiming to us, ‘‘Now
we’ll have a policeman in a blue uniform .standing on the corner!” I looked around for a “corner” and, seeing
none, wondered if those would soon be built. But our village retained the essence of its identity throughout the
.sixties and seventies. Even today it is little changed from what it was then.
-Vemita Herdman, Native Village of Unalakleet, Program Director, Rural Alaska Community Action Program
In recent years, Alaskan tribes have been locked in a struggle to protect their native subsistence hunting and
fishing rights, YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE by contacting your members of Congress to ask them to
support Alaskan subsistence hunting and fishing rights by assuring that no changes are made to Title VIII of
the 1980 Alaska National Interest Land Claims Settlement Act.
When I was playing high .school sports in the state of Maine, there were a number of us Pe nob scots on the
team. And we were all right half-backs or we were all safeties, and .so that meant that we had to compete
amongst each other. It was a well-designed scheme to only allow one of us on the field at any one time.
And I sat hack and looked at the [federal appropriations process] and .saw that these kinds of techniques
are used at all levels! There might be one half of one percent of a particular federal line item that all
tribes get to compete for.
—Jerry Pardilla, Penobscot; Executive Director, National Tribal Environmental Council
The FY2000 federal budget is shaping up to contain devastating cuts in tribal programs. “Budget caps” put in
place as part of Congress’ effort to enact a balanced budget will require reductions from FY99 spending, and
Congress and the President are calling for significantly increased military spending within that smaller pie.
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE by contacting your members of Congress to ask that tribal programs be
funded at or above the President’s request for FY2000, and that the budget not be balanced at the expense of
non-military domestic human needs.
FCNL Indian Report, Summer 1999 Page 3
As we decide what it is we wish to work on together...we need to look at our past history'. Those moments that
seem to work are those in which both Friends and Indians were really talking to each other, were really listen¬
ing to each other.
—Stephen McNeil, Strawberry Creek Friends
FCNL’s work in Indian Affairs is undertaken in close collaboration with tribal organizations and leadership.
Publications such as the Indian Report and the Native American Legislative Updates offer regular opportunities
to MAKE A DIFFERENCE on legislation that tribes and their supporters have identified as important.
RESOURCES
□ Reaffirming Our Promise to the Seventh Generation: A briefing book on critical issues facing
Indian Country today. Prepared by FCNL for the Native American Working Group of the
Washington Interreligious Staff Community.G-9123-NA
□ Native America 101: A Study Packet .G-9122-NA
□ FCNL letter to Congress re: Native American concerns in the 106th Congress.L-914-NA
□ Teaching about Native Americans and Quakers: A FCNL First Day School Curriculum .G-970-NA
□ The FCNL Native American Legislative Updates, available by e-mail, FAX, or regular mail.
(Also posted on FCNL’s web page.)
A contribution for duplication and postage will extend the work of FCNL.
FROM KOSOVO TO WASHINGTON
As Friends gathered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this spring for islative proposals are brought forth that would further
the 1999 Gathering of Friends on Indian Affairs, erode the land and sovereignty which tribes reserved for
NATO’s bombs were falling in the Balkans, ostensibly themselves in treaties.
in a moral effort to prevent “ethnic cleansing.” The
With 77 days of bombing, many lives lost, immense
irony of this situation was not lost on the group as we
damage to Yugoslavia’s civilian infrastructure, and bil¬
gathered to consider the impacts of a harsh and method¬
lions of taxpayer dollars, the U.S. and NATO have
ical “ethnic cleansing” that took place in the U.S. itself.
elicited compromise from Serbia on a few sticking
From the Trail of Tears to the forced removals of
points that remained after negotiations prior to the
Navajo, Apache, Ho-Chunk, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and
bombing. The sharp increase in military spending
Mdewakanton Dakota peoples, the U.S. government has
deemed necessary in the wake of this conflict will likely
its own shameful history of ethnic atrocities.
mean even deeper cuts in federal spending on Indian
Our national ignorance of this history reached the programs, and we will move one step further from ful¬
peak of irony as the U.S. sent “Apache” gunships and filling the promises made to quell ethnic conflict in our
“Blackhawk” helicopters to join the conflict in own country.
Kosovo. Makatai Meshekiakiak (Black Hawk) led the
Ethnic conflicts will persist from Washington to Kosovo
Sauk and Meskwaki tribes of Illinois as they fled U.S.
until we learn that peace does not come from war, or
troops into Wisconsin, where they were massacred on
from a piece of paper, but from mutual listening, com¬
the banks of the Mississippi River. And as California
passion, respect, and concerted action that we have yet
State Rep. Tom Hayden pointed out in a recent op ed,
to undertake as a nation. Perhaps if we can summon the
“The real Apaches... were victims of a brutal, even
integrity and humility to consider our own history with
genocidal, ethnic cleansing by the U.S. armed forces
eyes open and defenses laid aside, we may find some¬
in the last century. That our government can self-
thing more constructive than bombs to offer in future
righteously go to war to save Kosovo with helicopters
ethnic conflicts. ■
named after the victims of our own ethnic cleansing
measures the state of denial we are in.”
Reprinting Indian Report Items
While the bombing has ceased and NATO has declared
a victory in the Balkans, peace is far from won. In the We encourage our readers to copy and distribute items
U.S. today, we see the ways in which ethnic conflicts from FCNL's Indian Report. When doing so, please
will not simply go away when a treaty is signed. In pre¬ include the following credit:
sent-day Washington State the Makah tribe has been “Reprinted from the Indian Report, [issue #,quarter and
inundated with death threats in response to their effort yearl published by the Friends Committee on National
to exercise a direct treaty right of whaling. Alaskan Legislation."
tribes have met with racially-charged attacks from mem¬
We would very much appreciate your sending us a copy
bers of the Alaskan legislature over subsistence hunting with a brief note indicating how/where the item was used
and fishing rights. Every year in Washington, D.C., leg¬ and the approximate numbers of copies distributed. ■
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